We’ve all heard the horror stories about Heartbreak Hill; it is perhaps the most notorious of all elevation changes in major marathons. But, just how bad is it? And how does it stack up to the hills in other big marathons around the country?

Using the elevation data stored by runners on Strava, I compared Heartbreak to the major hills from each of the biggest five marathons of 2011. Picking out where exactly the biggest hill of a marathon starts and stops is a bit of a subjective matter, but I tried to keep it as consistent as possible, choosing the lowest point before the climb started, and the highest point before the elevation began significantly dropping again.

When you only take elevation difference into account, Heartbreak Hill hardly lives up to its nasty reputation. It climbs a mere 91 feet, which makes it the second smallest hill on the list. (Chicago is, of course, known for being pancake flat and doesn’t have anything that counts as a real hill.) On the other end of the spectrum, the hill that starts off Marine Corps is more than double the climb of Heartbreak at 211 feet.

But elevation change isn’t the only thing that makes a hill tough; the rate at which that change happens also makes a big difference. The climb late in New York City as runners enter Central Park may have a touch more in the way of elevation gain, but it’s spread out over twice the distance, so it doesn’t seem nearly as hard. In fact, when you compare the grade of the biggest hills of the five marathons, Heartbreak is the steepest at 3.3%.

The final thing to consider is the point in the race at which the hill comes. Heartbreak Hill comes after runners have traveled over twenty miles, much of it on grueling downhills that wear out the quads. So, even if the hills near the start of Marine Corps and Los Angeles are bigger, they don’t seem as bad because of where they are placed.

Low(Feet)

Start(Miles)

High(Feet)

End(Miles)

Change(Feet)

Distance(Feet)

Grade

Boston

146

20.33

237

20.85

91

2,746

3.3%

Chicago

584

8.09

601

9.91

17

9,610

0.2%

N.Y.C.

18

22.67

115

23.71

97

5,491

1.8%

L.A.

270

3.53

399

4.49

129

5,069

2.5%

M.C.M.

17

0.09

228

2.22

211

11,246

1.9%

Big Sur

24

9.87

560

12.08

536

11,669

4.6%

Out of personal curiosity, since I’m running Big Sur in two weeks as part of the Runner’s World Challenge, I decided to compare the hill at Hurricane Point to Heartbreak. With over five times as much elevation gain and a significantly steeper grade, the hill in Big Sur makes Boston’s hills seem less heartbreaking by comparison. Maybe I signed up for the wrong race…

Note: The elevation data used here comes from personal GPS devices and is therefore subject to a certain amount of error. It gets especially wonky on bridges as the elevation data for those points often comes in as the what’s below the bridge, not the surface of the bridge. This is most visible on the Big Sur course; those deep, short apparent canyons aren’t really there.